


A Tall Cool Glass Of Water

by tielan



Series: Imagine Your OTP [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Imagine your OTP, Jogging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 19:05:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8459440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Maria doesn’t usually go running. It’s not that she can’t run, it’s just that she doesn’t see the point. Give her a route to run and she gets bored.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine Your OTP "during a crisp August morning..."

Maria doesn’t usually go running. It’s not that she can’t run, it’s just that she doesn’t see the point.

Give her a route to run and she gets bored.

Give her a target and she’ll shoot it. Give her a goal and she’ll make it. Give her people to play with and she won’t let them down.

Of course, she’ll also be the most bitchy, aggressive player on the field, with a serious competitive streak, but whatever guys complain of when they think they’re not being heard, a competitive streak is not actually a flaw in a woman.

This morning, though, it’s go for a run or shoot someone. Probably the agent whose clusterfuckery she got stuck overseeing on account of ‘STRIKE Operations is busy with a surveillance job in the next town over’ which she mentally translated into ‘STRIKE Operations thinks they’re too good to clean up after other people’. And sure, it may have been her own prejudice against the men of STRIKE coming into play, but she doubts it.

Maria isn’t too good to clean up after other people, particularly not when it gets the job done and completes a circuit that they seriously need.

However, if she doesn’t get out of the apartment, she’s going to find herself using Agent Holswick as a punching bag which would be satisfying, but inadvisable. So she gets her activewear on, slings a pair of earbuds around her neck, takes a long slug of water and the keycard to the apartment, and heads out onto the street early.

It’s pretty cool for August – at least to her senses. Then again, this is Brussels, not New York, and while the temperatures will rise by the midafternoon, it’s not too bad in the mornings. Plus, she likes running through the winding roads of the old city, glancing in the windows of the tourist shops as the sliver of blue sky overhead gleams above her, promising a lovely summer’s day...

She registers the footsteps coming up behind her almost immediately, and lets her gaze drift to the angled window of a passing shop, looking for the runner behind her. The move is part of her training, but the wariness is pure feminine self-preservation.

A glimpse – powerful shoulders and body, lean hips and long legs – and her breath catches. She resists the urge to turn and confront, and a moment later, he lopes into place beside her, matching her stride and her pace, although at this speed, it’s probably just like walking to him. “Morning, commander.”

“Captain.” She spares him a glance as they reach a widening of the street, surprised that someone’s managed to persuade him it’s not a sin to show his legs in public. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Antwerp?”

“They decided my particular skillset wasn’t needed, so I ended up with some time on my hands before we fly back.” Rogers glances at her. “You didn’t say you were in town.”

“I didn’t realise you needed to know.”

“Need to? No. Want to? Yes.”

Maria jogs down an intersecting street, leaning into his space as she turns them both down the route she wishes to go.

“Can I help? With what you’re doing.”

“Not really.”

“All right. Will you let me buy you a drink?”

Maria’s mouth quirks as she navigates around an elderly woman toiling up the hill with a wheeled shopping bag. He drops back so the woman can pass, then lengthens his stride to catch up. “You’ve already gotten me into bed, you know.”

“And that’s the only reason a man would buy a woman a drink?”

She bites back her instinctive answer, _It is for me._ He doesn’t like it when she’s honest about her general unattractiveness to men. And she can’t really blame him; it doesn’t reflect well on his taste when the woman he’s fucking isn’t the girl who brings all the guys to the yard.

“The only drink I’m thinking of right now is a big glass of water. And perhaps a coffee.”

Rogers’ shoulder presses against hers, herding her down a street, and she gives him a look but accepts his re-direction. Five minutes later, he touches her arm, and they stop outside a little café at the corner of an intersection, the angle of the streets making a courtyard-like space out the front of the shop.

“My treat,” says Rogers, waving one hand towards the door. “How about it?”

Maria regards the wooden trim of the windows, painted a dark green, the embossed lettering of the café name on the glass door, the small metal chairs around the teeny-tiny tabletops where a quarter of the real-estate is taken up with a jar of sugar sticks and their substitutes. She takes off her ballcap and sweeps the strands of hair that have escaped her ponytail back underneath it, then settles the cap back on her head and looks up at him and shrugs. “Okay.”

But as she precedes him in, he leans over her shoulder and murmurs, “We can talk about getting you into bed again later, if you’re willing.”

She doesn’t shiver at the invitation in his voice, but pauses in her stride for a moment, letting him press up against her back, big and warm and sensuous, before gently easing away. “Later,” she agrees.


End file.
